For 2009 we started a new strategy of daily check-ins from the bottom up every day in the office. This means that every department does a scrum-like daily check-in answering the following questions while standing in under 10 minutes:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What are you going to do today?
- Do you have any roadblocks?
Then, the department leader asks if there are any ideas for improvements as well as any heroes to recognize for outstanding work. We do this every single day! People that telecommute (we have a one day a week telecommute policy for everyone) dial in to a conference number.
This is a bottom up daily check-in as everyone does at least one and up to three of these in a row in the morning. It works as follows:
- 9:30 – Managers with direct reports
- 9:40 – Managers of managers
- 9:50 – Leadership team
This way, any issues are immediately propagated across the organization and can be worked through by the leadership team within 20 minutes of finding it out.
There’s an awesome buzz of noise every morning when this takes place. I’m a big fan of it.
David Cummings on Startups 
So now that it’s been a few months down the road, is the daily check-in still working well?
We’ve done it for almost two years now and it works great.
How are the daily check ins working out? Have you stopped doing this or going thru the exercise less often?
We still do it every day.